


An Exercise in Unfogging

by chasingfictions



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Divination, Friendship, Hogwarts Fourth Year, Reading Tea Leaves, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 07:53:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8615806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasingfictions/pseuds/chasingfictions
Summary: Parvati's planning to be the greatest Seer of her generation. A short fic about determination and Divination.





	

 

_Friday, November 14th, 1994_

Parvati gripped the teacup so tightly that she could see the outline of her knuckle bones. She loved the feel of porcelain under her hands. She liked that the cups were so delicate, their sides the width of petals. She liked that, despite that delicacy, they held whole vibrant world within them. Each teacup was a deep basin, swirling with dark liquid, filling up her mouth with heat. And after all that was done, well, there was the future. Sitting in clumps of herbs at the bed of the cup was a whole story. She loved most of all the feeling that came at the very end, once she’d finally cracked the message behind the tea leaves. It came quickly, usually, that moment of clarity, when the secret was revealed and a cool flush worked its way across her face.

Professor Trelawney had said she had a gift.

This teacup was tricky, though. Maybe it was just that it was late. The moon was heavy in the sky above Gryffindor Tower. It was the moon’s fault that she was so tired. She’d stayed late in the Astronomy Tower last night, long after class was over, trying to memorize which constellations the moon was transiting. Padma had beat her on the last Astronomy exam, and she wanted to prove herself. And though Padma _always_ beat her on exams, this had been on transits, planetary interactions, constellations: _practically_ astrology, and _definitely_ vital for Divination. She _deserved_ to get a better grade on that exam. She _ought_ to have gotten a better grade on that exam.

But now her eyes were itching something mad, even moreso for straining to see the cup in the firelight. The common room was emptied of all life but for her and the whispering fireplace.

She squinted hard at the tea leaf dregs. She’d thought, when she first looked at it, that it was an eye, pupil and iris all intact. It even had eyelashes, bent and scattered though they might have been, and so clearly what this cup was trying to tell her was that she did have the gift. It was telling her not to worry, all would be made clear in time. But the lower lash curved just so, and the iris was messily diffuse, and there was that smudge in the lower left corner of the cup, and soon it was perfectly evident that this wasn’t anything close to an eye at all. How could she have been so daft? It was blatantly a bulging tree, leaves hanging off, stump set firmly in the earth. So … growth? A trip home? No, no, it wasn’t a tree at all.

A deep sigh rumbled through her lips. She drew her legs up in the armchair and wrapped one arm around her shins. The other she draped over her knees, clutching the teacup by its twiggy handle.

A creaking sound eased into the floorboards behind her. Parvati whipped her head around to see a familiar figure hovering in the stairwell to the girls’ dormitories. The figure moved closer. The light revealed two sparkling dark eyes, three tight coils of hair bursting from their satin head wrap, and the familiar rhythm of Lavender Brown’s dancing stride. Her brown cheeks were lit up a russet gold in the firelight, and Parvati let out a smile.

“I’ll be up to bed soon, I promise,” Parvati assured the other girl, who promptly dropped her body into a neighboring armchair. She shoved the chair closer to Parvati’s with her legs, till she could peer down into the teacup without straining her neck.

“I’m not here to scold you. I couldn’t sleep. Hermione’s snoring something awful,” Lavender responded.

“You’d think she’d have learned to charm her nose to be silent by now, wouldn’t you? There must some book in the library on sleep magic.”

“I’m counting the days,” Lavender said. “Speaking of which—”

“—speaking of Hermione’s snoring?”

“Speaking of sleep magic. I was talking to Professor Trelawney today, in her office—”

“—Without me? Lavender!”

“You were holed up in the library with Padma all afternoon! And I had urgent questions that needed exploring.”

“I’m sure you did,” Parvati replied with an exaggerated pout. She felt childish as she said it. But something about how tired she was, and the thought of Lavender learning something without her, tracking down secrets that Parvati wasn’t, made her stick out her bottom lip even more.

“I’m sorry Parvati. I shouldn’t have gone without you, I know. Do you forgive me?” Lavender batted her eyelashes and inched her face right next to Parvati’s, and Parvati giggled and felt warm all through her belly.

“That depends on how urgent the questions were.”

“Terribly urgent. Anxiously urgent. End-of-life-as-we-know-it urgent!” Lavender said, rising up in her chair like a rousing war hero, and Parvati giggled again and tugged her friend down by the fabric of her nightgown.

“Is that so?”

“So get this,” Lavender whispered, her eyebrows shooting up. “I had a prophetic dream!”

“You did not! Did you? Lavender!” Parvati squealed. “A dream about what? Was it … ominous?”

“Hard to say. Everything was sort of muddled. But there were all of these figures in dark robes. Er, they might have been curtains though, like, blowing in the wind? There was wind definitely, coming in from the distance. And there was this feeling, like being thrown into icy water. And a scream. Or, well, it could have been a laugh. But a cold one.” Lavender’s voice had lost its teasing heights. She spoke in whispers into the flickering mantle.

“Merlin, Lavender. That’s … I don’t know what that is.” And Parvati felt cold too now, though she couldn’t pick out why. “How do you even know it was prophetic? Can’t it just have been, you know, a dream?”

Lavender’s eyes shot up in the dim. “I just know, okay?”

“It sounds very vague to me,” Parvati replied, and began turning the teacup around and around in her palms. She liked the smooth, dark lines her fingers made against the pale blue cup.

“That’s what divination is, though. It’s vague and strange and fluid.”

“I don’t think so. Well, I agree that it’s strange and fluid. But it’s not vague. If you’re really, if you’re really gifted in it, then it should all come out clear. You should just be able to _see_.”

“What, so you can ‘see’, Parvati? You’re just so gifted and the rest of us are making it all up?” Lavender snapped.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. I’m sorry. Just, just keep on with the story, alright? What did Professor Trelawney say?” She turned the cup around again and again, watching its image transform at each new angle. It was a bird in one moment, and a sharp crescent the next, and a formless jumble of tea leaves the next. She snapped her gaze back to Lavender.

“Well,” Lavender continued with a huff. “I was very disturbed when I woke up. I couldn’t concentrate a bit during History of Magic—well, even less than usual. I just kept thinking and thinking about it. And I just _knew_ it was different from any dream I’d ever had. So during lunch I ran up to Professor Trelawney’s office, and I explained the dream. And _she_ thought so too. That it was a dream out of the ordinary, that is. She said she’d been getting strange sensations too. Well, technically, she said she’d been receiving ‘wavering whispers of danger from the Beyond.’ But it’s the same gist.”

“But what does it mean?” Parvati asked. Her head felt a little heavy listening to Lavender talk, which had never happened before. Usually listening to Lavender talk was the best part of her day.

“Sorry?”

“What did Professor Trelawney say the dream meant?” An anxious feeling was fluttering up underneath her fingernails as Parvati imagined receiving her own prophetic dreams.She pictured visions in the night flashing under her eyelids, and rushing on waking to tell someone, for the fate of the world might be at stake. A dream so powerful it could save someone. She felt giddy and wild at the thought.

“Er. Well, she said it _might_ be a manifestation of internal psychic troubles. I’ve got a sensitive energy, you know. Things affect me. Or it _could_ be something else. Danger up ahead.”

“But you don’t know what kind of danger?”

“It’s not like reading a newspaper, Parvati! What’s gotten into you? Can’t you just be excited for me?”

“I’m very excited for you, Lavender.”

“You don’t seem like it.”

“Well I _am._ ”

The room fell silent then. The crackle of the fire seemed louder in the absence of their voices. Parvati spun the teacup again and again in her hands, and that sound was amplified too. An echoey cupping that filled the soundless room.

“Would you _stop_ that? Where did you even get a teacup this time of night?”

“I left a note out for the house elves this morning. I tucked it under my pillow. There was a cup of earl gray waiting for me after dinner.”

“You’ve been looking at that cup since after dinner?”

“Among other things. I’ve done some homework as well. Or tried to.”

“Merlin, Parvati,” Lavender yawned, and stood up. “You’ve got to go to bed. You’ll drive yourself mad trying to divine for that long.”

“I can do it. I know I can.”

“Fine. Well, I’m going to bed.” She leaned over, gave Parvati a peck on the forehead. She started up the steps and paused. “You know, sometimes it just doesn’t come. ”

“We’ll see about that,” Parvati said. She’d meant for it to sound like a joke but it came out brittle and harsh.

“Just try to get some sleep, Parvati. Please?”

“I’ll make an attempt,” Parvati responded, to which Lavender chuckled, and darted up the stairs.

Parvati sighed back into her chair and stared at the blob again. It looked remarkably like the shape of her nose. Like Padma’s nose. She wondered if Padma would find that funny. If this were the summer she could run over to Padma’s bed and they could laugh about it together. Then again, Padma would also probably laugh at her for reading tea leaves in the first place.

 

She and her twin had been in the library together that afternoon, huddled over their books. Padma was poring through a supplementary Transfiguration book she’d gotten from Professor McGonagall. It was dizzying to watch Padma study. Unlike Parvati, whose focus would shift twenty times a minute, Padma wouldn’t look up from the book once. She examined every single tiny word on every single thin page with her eyebrows all furrowed and her nose practically touching the binding.

“You’re going to ruin your eyes, sis,” Parvati had said. She had a Transfiguration book open on the table too—the official textbook for class, the one with helpful diagrams and large, clear letters—but she wasn’t looking at it. Instead she had her eyes glued to _Unfogging the Future,_ which sat in her lap. It was opened to the chapter on Tasseomancy. The page was covered in different dark shapes of tea leaf omens, plus lines and lines of Parvati’s looping script crammed into the margins.

“I’ll wear glasses then,” Padma said, and flashed a teasing smile. “Besides, I might argue that you’ll ruin your eyes too if you spend your days squinting the dregs of teacups.”

“I do not squint.”

“No?”

“No. I … gaze. I gaze with … clarity and precision.”

“Of course you do,” Padma said with a mocking slowness.

“I do!” Parvati said, too loud, eliciting a shush from both Madam Pince at her desk and Hermione at the next table. She sunk her voice to a whisper. “You know I don’t like it when you do that.”

“What is it that I’m doing?” Padma said, returning her eyes to her book.

“Acting like the things I like to study are, are lesser than yours.”

“I don’t think they’re _lesser_ necessarily. I just don’t know if I’d call it _studying_ ,” Padma smirked in that way she always had when they were children. Like she knew she was being cruel, but the satisfaction of feeling right was too good to pass up.

“You don’t know anything about it, Padma.”

“Well then explain it to me, please. I really would love to understand, the erm, what was it Trelawney called it, ‘ _noble_ art of Divination?’” Padma replied with a chortle.

Parvati levelled a glare at her sister, and Padma’s smile vanished.

“ _Professor_ Trelawney is a genius and a gifted Seer. And, and I’m not going to try to explain things to you that you’re just going to disrespect,” Parvati said, and dropped her head back down towards her lap.

“Parvati—”

“I’m trying to concentrate, Padma.”

They stayed like that, hunched over their books till they got cricks in their necks, until the sun vanished from the sky, at which point they silently marched down to dinner, and sat at their respective tables with their backs to one another.

 

Huddled in the common room, still clutching her teacup, Parvati shivered. The fire was going down to embers, and she hadn’t thought to bring a jumper. She could go upstairs, but she knew if she did she’d just crawl into bed. By morning, the house elves would have taken the teacup away, and she wouldn’t ever figure out what it was trying to say.

She looked down at the teacup again and frowned. It was … it was … a bear, no, no, a sun with long rays, a sun and a key, and key and a lock, a lock of hair, it was, it was _nothing_ , this was all _nothing_ and she would never be a true Seer anyway.

“ _Ugh!_ ” Parvati groaned, and flung out her arms in frustration, letting the teacup clatter to the rug with a thump. She glanced down, and saw that the rim had chipped, and that her tea leaves had sloshed up the sides of the cup, warping the image irreparably.

Leaving the cup upturned on the floor, she hurried up to bed and slept. Her dreams were fitful, but ordinary. Painfully ordinary. She woke to harsh yellow light lining her forehead, a forehead that had never produced a single prescient dream. She let herself wallow in the disappointment for several minutes, so by the time she stood up her even her shoulders felt heavy with inadequacy. She spent twice as long as normal applying soft brown kohl around her eyes, and testing out plum lipglosses she’d bought in Muggle London. She thought it might make her feel cheerier. Which it did, but not enough.

She got to breakfast later than usual and dropped onto the bench beside Lavender, across from Seamus and Dean. The two boys were surrounded in a scatter of Charms notes, though they didn’t seem to be looking at it. Instead they tossed rolls of bread back and forth with their wands in a game of catch.

“How’d the cup come?” Lavender asked, biting into a strip of bacon.

“Er, alright,” Parvati mumbled. She spooned lumps of cottage cheese and jam into her bowl.

“Well what’d you find?”

Parvati swallowed a large spoonful of cottage cheese before answering. “Erm, it was inconclusive.”

“Would you say it was … vague?” Lavender asked, eyebrows waggling.

“What cup?” Seamus asked, flinging a scone at Dean with his wand. Dean caught it in the air with his own wand, then lobbed it back at Seamus.

“I was trying to practice my tea leaves last night,” Parvati explained.

“What do you need to practice for? You’re already the best one in our year at it,” said Dean.

Parvati felt a flush of pride, and smiled wide. “I … I just want to _stay_ that way.”

“Huh,” Dean said. “I’d never really thought of studying for Divination. It seems like something you’re just born with, yeah?”

“Just because you’re born with it doesn’t mean you don’t have to practice at it. It’s just as serious as any other subject!” Parvati exclaimed.

“Didn’t say it wasn’t,” said Dean. He dropped the scone, instead levitating a red, round apple.

“Oh! You’re fighting with Padma, aren’t you?” Lavender asked.

“Not quite _fighting_ , it’s just old stuff that’s—”

“I _knew_ it! Well, alright, I didn’t know it. But I should have known. You’re as smart as she is, Parvati. You’re just good at different things!”

“I know that I’m smart, Lav. But that’s not enough.”

Before Lavender could rebut again, or infuriatingly assure Parvati of her worth as a person, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville descended on the table, arguing about the Triwizard Tournament.

“… Skeeter doesn’t know _what_ she’s talking about, Harry,” Hermione was saying. “And besides, no one worth your time ever takes her seriously!”

“My gran always says she’s full of rubbish,” added Neville, nodding profusely.

Soon their whole segment of the table was caught up in the discussion, except for Ron, who sat sullenly in the corner and munched on piece after piece of buttered toast. They went back and forth on whether or not the _Prophet_ is all tosh, and then on what the First Task would be. It was typical Harry, Parvati thought, making everything about him, whether he was trying to or not. She wasn’t as put off as usual, though. She was, for the first time in her life, glad to have the discussion turn from Divination.

She even joined in on the argument herself after a few minutes of moping. Because, she said several times with vehemence, _obviously_ the _Prophet_ is complete and utter nonsense. But that’s just all the more reason to take it seriously. Harry didn’t seem too comforted by that, but he told her after breakfast that he was glad she’d been honest.

  

Parvati sat in the library late that evening, her nose stuck into _Unfogging the Future_. She hadn’t gotten nearly as much studying done that day as she’d meant to—Lavender and her had elected to spend their Saturday trying out new nail varnish potions. It perhaps hadn’t been the wisest of moves, but she couldn’t deny how happy it made her whenever she caught glimpse of her glimmering pink nails.

She had a monstrous Charms essay to write all day Sunday, though, so this would be her only chance before Monday’s Divination class to get even a little bit of extra work done. She was determined to use every last minute of it.

The library seemed to be entirely empty—not even Hermione, or a single N.E.W.T. student. Parvati supposed even Hermione must do _something_ fun on Saturday nights. People could surprise you. If someone had told Parvati last year that she’d spend a Saturday night knee-deep in an obscure edition of her Divination textbook, she’d have laughed at them. If they’d said she’d find it even funner than goofing off with Lavender and Seamus and Dean in the common room, she’d have broken down laughing till her sides ached.

She double-checked again that there was no one around her, and began to quietly read aloud.

“ _The secret to performing accurate and revelatory Tasseomancy goes far beyond simply knowing by heart each omen and symbol. As with Cartomancy and Chiromancy, a rote memorization of correspondences and meanings can only carry a diviner to a certain point. To truly understand the messages revealed by the tea leaves, one must listen, intently and without bias or judgement. One must accept without resistance their instinct, their intuition, and all the waves and ministrations of their very soul. A true diviner makes no conjecture. They do not pretend certainty where they have none. A true diviner never has need to pretend to understand the signs—if they simply listen well to the messages before them, all will always be clear.”_

“You still like to read aloud, huh?”

Parvati twisted around in her seat to see Padma standing behind her, with a stack of books held tight to her chest.

“Yeah. I always remember things better when they have sounds attached,” Parvati said. She tucked a hair ribbon from her pocket onto her page in _Unfogging the Future_ and flipped the book closed.

“I used to find that infuriating when we were kids. Whenever Mum and Dad sent us to read silently in our room, you always mumbled the words under your breath. It used to drive me mad.” She lowered her body into the seat beside Parvati’s, laid her books softly on the table, and rested her head in her palm. It was a familiar image, Padma cradling her own head. She’d done it all their lives. The sight of it made Parvati feel warm.

“It’s funny, though,” Padma continued with a smile. “It always feels strange to read in silence now. Someone’s always making some sort of noise up in the Ravenclaw common room—music, recitations, debates. It makes it feel more like home. But it’s still not quite the same as living with you.”

“That’s very sweet, Pad. I didn’t know that,” Parvati said quietly. “Are you, erm, here to study?”

“Technically. I was looking for you after dinner, and I didn’t see you, I went asking round up by Gryffindor Tower, and Lavender said you’d be in here all night. So here I am.”

“To talk to me about my reading habits?”

“No, no, I, I was … that is I meant to … I want to apologize. I was a rotten prat,” Padma said. She kept her gaze down on her stack of books.

Parvati chuckled. “I’m sure you weren’t that. But please go on.”

“I know I can be condescending a lot of the time. And I’m working on that, I really am. But I should never, have said that Divination isn’t legitimate. I don’t think that. It was a stupid, unfunny joke.”

Padma turned up at last to look Parvati in the eye. An almost identical pair of eyes to her own. Strangers could never tell them apart. But the girls knew there was a crinkle on the outside of Parvati’s eyes that Padma lacked, and that Padma’s eyes were a touch closer together than her sister’s.

“The last thing I’d ever want would be to hurt you, Parvati,” Padma said. “I love you. And I get stupid and competitive and mean, but I do love you, more than anyone else in the world, and—”

“Thank you, Padma. That means a lot,” Parvati interrupted with a smile, and a flush of satisfaction across her cheeks.  “Do you want to stay? I’m going to be here working all night. I’d love some company. I hate to study alone. ”

“Sure! I’ve got mountains of reading to do for History of Magic tonight. I’m awfully behind”

“Padma Patil, behind on her reading?” Parvati said with an exaggerated gasp. “Are you feeling quite alright?”

“ _Normally_ I’m not behind. I’ve just been caught up in all this extra reading McGonagall gave me. Okay, technically, I asked her for it.” Padma smiled. “You’re studying for Divination, yeah?”

“I am. I’m trying to get my tea leaves down. I’ve been doing fine in class—better than fine, actually—but there’s still this like, this wall that’s still up. I’m not fully _in it_ yet.”

“I’m sure you’ll get there eventually, Parvati. But you don’t have to become a fully-fledged Seer overnight. Or, erm. You know you don’t have to study till you drop to like, prove me wrong or anything, right?”

Parvati laughed. “Padma, I’m not doing this for you! Well, yeah, maybe a little bit for you. But, honestly, I really just want to _understand._ The more I learn about it the more I can’t stop learning. I’m going to be great, Padma. I’m going to be great and then use it to do good for the world. I refuse to accept anything less.”


End file.
